[Apologies to those who do not read Chinese, here's the long due journal of the Sichuan deployment trip in English! Enjoy~]
On the morning of 6 June, Hong Kong International Airport.
8 people in our group, volunteers for this OLPC deployment trip. Our destination is for Dujiangyan, Sichuan. Our mission? To give 1000 XO laptops to children in Puyang Primary School, and to hold a few "XO workshops" to provide a bit of basic training for them. We hope that by deploying the laptops before summer vacation, the children will have ample time to get themselves familiar with their new friend during the summer.
The trip lasts for 5 days, so there aren't too many personal items to bring. Yet one of our volunteers, Charles, appeared with huge luggage. "That's the School Server inside", he explained.
The luggage of two other volunteers, Jacky and Henry was quite heavy too. Jacky, as our de-facto-official photographer, stuffed his luggage with expensive-looking gear. Henry, another photography enthusiast, seems to have brought luggage that equaled his body weight. And of course it wasn't just photography gear -- technical accessories such as mice, wireless routers, USB flash drives, etc. were all prepared just in case we needed them.
The flight lasted about two hours, and after that we were at the Chengdu Airport. A few volunteers, including our leader Anthony Wong, who arrived Chengdu earlier met up with us.
On the morning of 6 June, Hong Kong International Airport.
8 people in our group, volunteers for this OLPC deployment trip. Our destination is for Dujiangyan, Sichuan. Our mission? To give 1000 XO laptops to children in Puyang Primary School, and to hold a few "XO workshops" to provide a bit of basic training for them. We hope that by deploying the laptops before summer vacation, the children will have ample time to get themselves familiar with their new friend during the summer.
The trip lasts for 5 days, so there aren't too many personal items to bring. Yet one of our volunteers, Charles, appeared with huge luggage. "That's the School Server inside", he explained.
The luggage of two other volunteers, Jacky and Henry was quite heavy too. Jacky, as our de-facto-official photographer, stuffed his luggage with expensive-looking gear. Henry, another photography enthusiast, seems to have brought luggage that equaled his body weight. And of course it wasn't just photography gear -- technical accessories such as mice, wireless routers, USB flash drives, etc. were all prepared just in case we needed them.
The flight lasted about two hours, and after that we were at the Chengdu Airport. A few volunteers, including our leader Anthony Wong, who arrived Chengdu earlier met up with us.
(Speaking of Anthony, I feel compelled to mention the great efforts he spent in securing the timely delivery of the XOs to the deployment site. For the 1000 XOs we are giving in this deployment, 100 had already arrived a few months ago when we held training workshops for teachers of the school in April. The remaining 900 XOs were shipped to Sichuan in two loads, from Hong Kong and Shanghai respectively. Due to procedural problems in customs and taxes, the cargo was held up, and time was running out. Obviously we cannot do much with 100 XOs in a school of about a thousand students. To deal with the problem, Anthony made about seventy phone calls in one day calling up relevant government departments in Sichuan to get the XOs moving. And they arrived just in time. Whew!)
We took a van from Chengdu Airport to Dujiangyan. Although urban reconstruction masked most of the scars in the 512 Earthquake, occasionally we still saw half-collapsed buildings along the way.
We found our final hotel after a bit of a struggle with other hotels. Two local helpers, who expressed interest in our project, arrived too. We also called up five University of Hong Kong students who happened to be around in Sichuan and was interested in helping out.
After everybody arrived and settled down, we held a short meeting to plan division of tasks and other matters for tomorrow's XO workshop.
When the meeting was over, it was dinner time already. Speaking of dinner, one of our favorite pastimes during the trip was to guess how spicy the food was. Sichuan cuisine is famous for its "ma la", the hot and numbing taste through a combination of chili peppers and Sichuan pepers. One prominent "theory" among us was that, if the dish looks "red" and "spicy", the taste is probably relatively mild, and would be "safe to eat", whereas innocent looking dishes could wreck havoc on our tongues. I personally thought the spiciness was within my tolerance limits, so I never set out to confirm the theory myself. But even then sometimes I'd accidentally ingest a small piece of chili pepper, and when I realize my mistake it would be too late to reach for a glass of water :)
The story of Day 1 ends here. XO Workshop tomorrow, with photos~ Stay tuned!
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